NATION DATELINES

Compiled from Examiner wire reports

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, July 18, 1996

AH: Suspected killer of drug agent held McAllen, Texas A drug smuggler accused of torturing a U.S. drug agent and killing two Americans mistaken for agents has been arrested in a trailer park 11 years after the crimes.

Ezequiel Godinez Cervantes, 54, a native of San Juan, Texas, is accused of kidnapping and torturing undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in 1985 while a member of the Guadalajara Narcotics Cartel in Mexico. Camarena was found dead at a ranch.

Godinez is accused of helping, days before Camarena's slaying, to kill John Walker, a Vietnam veteran, and his friend Alberto Radelat, after the two walked in on a cartel meeting at a Guadalajara restaurant in January 1985.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

Cartel members mistakenly thought the two were drug agents.

Godinez, one of seven people named in the Camarena indictment who remained at large, broke out of a California jail in 1983 while serving time for drug smuggling. He is believed to have been living in the trailer park on the Mexico border for three months.

He is awaiting transfer to Los Angeles, where he was indicted in 1992.

Hospice enrollment

often comes late Boston Terminally ill patients who enroll in hospices die a more comfortable and less expensive death, but patients often don't enroll soon enough to take full advantage of the benefits, researchers found.

Hospices provide nursing care, medical equipment, drugs, physical and psychological therapy and social services to dying patients, most often in their homes, in the final months of life. Medicare picks up the cost for about 80 percent of patients.

"The goal has changed from eradicating the disease to eradicating the suffering," said Dr. Nicholas Christakis of the University of Chicago Medical Center, lead author of the study of 6,451 hospice patients.

Ideally, patients enroll about three months before death.

But the study, based on 1990 Medicare claims data, found that patients died an average of 36 days after they enrolled, and 15.6 percent of patients died within a week.

Pump to slow labor

a danger to mothers Washington Women's health advocates asked the government to stop use of an at-home device prescribed for thousands of pregnant women to fight premature labor, saying at least two previously healthy women died using it.

Matria Healthcare's at-home drug pump in itself is not dangerous. But it pumps into mothers an asthma drug called terbutaline the Food and Drug Administration has not approved to fight premature labor - the drug's label warns that giving it to women in labor can be dangerous, even deadly.

Simpson rejects

Simpson's team notified Santa Monica Superior Court Presiding Judge David Perez they were unwilling to accept Judge Alan Haber for the civil trial set to begin in September.

Under California law, each side in a lawsuit is entitled to reject one proposed judge without giving a reason.

Lead Simpson lawyer Robert Baker did not return phone calls Wednesday. But he was reportedly displeased with recent rulings by Haber requiring Simpson to answer more questions under oath and with the judge's media-friendly attitude.